Mignola Hellboy art day (or what would $250 get you in art in 1994?) 1 1

[GotSuperPowers?]

I've tended to skip posting about art days in recent times but the below piece I got yesterday is special enough for me to want to shout about it.

A top shelf Mike Mignola Hellboy page, battling a werewolf.  Hand lettered art.  BOOM punches.  Great big panels, all circa 1994.

And of course, the kicker - the hand written original price of $250 on it.  Sad to say, that isn't what I paid for it, nor can you double or treble etc that to get it from me, thanks for the offer though.  It does raise an interesting question though - what art could you have bought in 1994 for $250?  A Byrne FF page maybe?  A Miracleman page by Davis or Totleben? Most likely just about any Sandman page that was out there....what else?  My collecting started around 2000 or 2001 and I was too stupid to gain any sort of collecting focus until a couple of years later.

Enjoy the art!

Simon

 

Edited May 31, 2019 by GotSuperPowers?

[vodou]

$250 was a lot of OA money in the early/mid 1990s. Mike was asking a premium, as many artists do, for his current/new "hot" work. That premium at the time wasn't particularly justified but Mike could ask it because his only cost basis was his time and appreciation for his own creativity. Only because his art and the subject matter stood the test of time, stayed in publication, made it to Hollywood (three times!)...and is really nice art (unfortunately the last reason that most fanfolk would pay $250 then or $2500ish now) does $250 look like a "steal"...25 years later.

There's plenty of $250s from then where this didn't happen. A lot of it is visible on Lee Benakaka's comicartads.com. The obvious winners, hindsight, are anything Big Two superhero, anything Frank Miller, anything Mike Mignola. John Byrne's Next Men...not so much

I'm sure everybody can see the obvious genius of Mignola's Hellboy now (and falsely remember that they could then too) but how many stepped right up $250 in hand and figured "steal!" Um...no one.

You'd have done about as fine with this in 1996 too, for 20% less even

That was a quick grab. You can dig much deeper into 1993 here.

A quick grab from that complete catalog: Buscema Avengers 300 cover...$200. I think that cover number today is much larger than your Hellboy was. And what of it? Your new Mignola is awesome, good enough. 25 years ago, the future was just as murky then as now, as comic as industry was largely imploding under too much derivative garbage and silly marketing schemes (pogs!, holograms, foil-this-n-that, etc)...The End seemed to be right around the corner. Still seems that way, even though everything from "then" is (mostly) 10-100x more expensive now! LOL.

And perhaps you paid much more than 10x MSRP for your Hellboy, all the better...it's beautiful -for the art- and shouldn't be 'cheap' ever.

[Lee B.]

The price for what appears to be a fairly similar quality piece of Mignola Hellboy art had doubled by 1999.

[vodou]

3 hours ago, Lee B. said:

The price for what appears to be a fairly similar quality piece of Mignola Hellboy art had doubled by 1999.

Had it? That's from secondary, right? From primary (Mike's table) might well still have been -stripped of flip markup- $250.

Looks like Mitch's catalog, so maybe Mike had moved up to $350-75 or so, and the rest would be Mitch pressing the market a bit?

[Lee B.]

1 hour ago, vodou said:

Had it? That's from secondary, right? From primary (Mike's table) might well still have been -stripped of flip markup- $250.

Looks like Mitch's catalog, so maybe Mike had moved up to $350-75 or so, and the rest would be Mitch pressing the market a bit?

That was from Mitch's catalog--good eye!  I kind of assume that most of what Mitch had in his catalog sold, although once in a while some of the same pieces would show up in subsequent catalogs at lower prices (what a concept!).  

I don't know enough about Mitch's pricing approach and whether he was dealing with consignments much in 1994 as opposed to art directly from artists.  I do assume that Mitch likely offered his opinion on pricing where necessary.  

One can really go down a rabbit hole thinking about how things were priced in 1994, but what really kills me is the prices for my favorite artists like Byrne, Colan, and Perez at the time.

[GotSuperPowers?]

1 minute ago, Lee B. said:

That was from Mitch's catalog--good eye!  I kind of assume that most of what Mitch had in his catalog sold, although once in a while some of the same pieces would show up in subsequent catalogs at lower prices (what a concept!).  

I don't know enough about Mitch's pricing approach and whether he was dealing with consignments much in 1994 as opposed to art directly from artists.  I do assume that Mitch likely offered his opinion on pricing where necessary.  

One can really go down a rabbit hole thinking about how things were priced in 1994, but what really kills me is the prices for my favorite artists like Byrne, Colan, and Perez at the time.

Ah, this is more of what I wanted to know and understand.  The $250 asking price was definitely high up against those names so in relative terms, Mike was charging a premium for his art.  Thanks Lee!

[ESeffinga]

11 hours ago, GotSuperPowers? said:

Enjoy the art!

Simon

 

Indeed!

 

Total badassery and then some. Jealous in the extreme.

And I remember when these pages were those prices!

[cheekyj2112]

Fantastic pick up Simon. Mignola was just firing on all cylinders on this page.

So, will you be wanting the page 29 splash to go with it next?

Cheers

Joseph
https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerydetail.asp?gcat=9492

[GotSuperPowers?]

3 hours ago, cheekyj2112 said:

Fantastic pick up Simon. Mignola was just firing on all cylinders on this page.

So, will you be wanting the page 29 splash to go with it next?

Cheers

Joseph
https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerydetail.asp?gcat=9492

Thanks! And nope, there are limits to my insanity. I’ll let you know when I find them.

[GeneticNinja]

On 5/31/2019 at 6:39 AM, vodou said:

$250 was a lot of OA money in the early/mid 1990s. Mike was asking a premium, as many artists do, for his current/new "hot" work. That premium at the time wasn't particularly justified but Mike could ask it because his only cost basis was his time and appreciation for his own creativity. Only because his art and the subject matter stood the test of time, stayed in publication, made it to Hollywood (three times!)...and is really nice art (unfortunately the last reason that most fanfolk would pay $250 then or $2500ish now) does $250 look like a "steal"...25 years later.

There's plenty of $250s from then where this didn't happen. A lot of it is visible on Lee Benakaka's comicartads.com. The obvious winners, hindsight, are anything Big Two superhero, anything Frank Miller, anything Mike Mignola. John Byrne's Next Men...not so much

I'm sure everybody can see the obvious genius of Mignola's Hellboy now (and falsely remember that they could then too) but how many stepped right up $250 in hand and figured "steal!" Um...no one.

You'd have done about as fine with this in 1996 too, for 20% less even

That was a quick grab. You can dig much deeper into 1993 here.

A quick grab from that complete catalog: Buscema Avengers 300 cover...$200. I think that cover number today is much larger than your Hellboy was. And what of it? Your new Mignola is awesome, good enough. 25 years ago, the future was just as murky then as now, as comic as industry was largely imploding under too much derivative garbage and silly marketing schemes (pogs!, holograms, foil-this-n-that, etc)...The End seemed to be right around the corner. Still seems that way, even though everything from "then" is (mostly) 10-100x more expensive now! LOL.

And perhaps you paid much more than 10x MSRP for your Hellboy, all the better...it's beautiful -for the art- and shouldn't be 'cheap' ever.

Thanks for that Comicartads site. Something to check out. Back then it probably didn't even cross my mind that I could own original comic artwork. It was enough trying to get a bunch of comics and a few video games or systems. And there wasn't a comic shop that I went to that had original artwork. Honestly, I don't think those shops were the best at creating excitement for comics or their business. They had some expensive comics like many other shops on the wall and the weekly stuff around the shop. Some branched out into anime VHS and manga. A few had some toys and models. But no one was talking about key comics, high grades, or original artwork.

That's probably the reason I don't go to comic shops anymore and everything is online. The one good comic shop I remember was a small place right next door to an arcade, go kart, batting cage place. They got into anime before any other shop and always had the lower numbered Amazing Spider-Man issues. But they closed down.

Edited June 6, 2019 by GeneticNinja